Current weather

A new foundry nearing completion at GIW Industries will prime the Grovetown facility to meet rising global demand in the mining industry.

The 50,000-square-foot white-iron foundry will open in April and become fully operational this summer, said Pamela Aaron, a brand manager for GIW.

Under construction since early 2014, the 72-foot-tall foundry will house new heat treatment and melting furnaces, sand silos and six cranes to accommodate the large-scale slurry pumps produced at the site, according to the GIW Vice President of Operations Thomas Mueller.

A growing, thriving region bolstered by new missions headed to Fort Gordon was the topic of an Army listening session Tuesday intended for discussion on military force reductions that will cause posts across the nation to lose troops.

Some Evans residents will be without water on Tuesday because of a road widening project.

Water service to homes and businesses along Washington Road between Halali Farm Road and Hardy McManus Road will be temporarily suspended from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. The residents most affected by the water loss will be on the 4800 block of Washington Road and all the residents in the Villages at Greenbrier subdivision.

The temporary water loss is to allow for crews to relocate a 10-inch main water line as part of the widening of Washington Road.

At a typing speed of 65 words per minute, the director of the Columbia County Emer­gency and Operations Division, says she can broadcast warnings of inclement weather, road closures and natural-gas leaks in about 45 seconds to tens of thousands of residents across the seven-county metropolitan region.

Her contact list, which adds new entries daily, includes volunteers, industry leaders, public schools, university educators and even government officials from her former employer, the city of Augusta.

An Augusta developer has one month to produce missing state and federal permits and address infrastructure and traffic concerns before the Co­lum­bia County Planning Com­mis­sion will approve a $20 million water park he’s proposed off Interstate 20 in Grovetown.

The decision Thursday to accept Benjamin Bell’s request to postpone a rezoning hearing to April 2 for Scuttle’s Island, a 45-acre water park planned on Louisville Road, came after about 75 people supported four residents who spoke against the project.

Inevitably that seems to be the sentiment expressed whenever the issue of racial prejudice is raised by a story in the news.

I saw a lot of that sort of commentary this week reports of fraternity members of the Oklahoma Kappa chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon were caught gleefully singing the kind of deplorable racist chant that you might have expected 50 years ago, but not anywhere near college campus in 2015.

After 47 rounds of spelling obscure English, foreign and scientific words, Stallings Island Middle School pupil Charles Li won the Scripps National Regional Spelling Bee for the second year in a row in the The Augusta Chronicle’s Morris Auditorium onSaturday.

This year’s competition lasted for two hours, as pupils attempted to spell words read by the bee’s pronouncer, Dr. Charmaine Wilson.